When darkness broke away and morning began to dawn,
the town wore a strange aspect indeed.
Sleep had hardly been thought of all night. The
general alarm was so apparent in the faces of the
inhabitants, and its expression was so aggravated
by want of rest (few persons, with any property to
lose, having dared go to bed since Monday), that a
stranger coming into the streets would have supposed
some mortal pest or plague to have been raging.
In place of the usual cheerfulness and animation of
morning, everything was dead and silent. The
shops remained closed, offices and warehouses were
shut, the coach and chair stands were deserted, no
carts or waggons rumbled through the slowly waking
streets, the early cries were all hushed; a universal
gloom prevailed. Great numbers of people were
out, even at daybreak, but they flitted to and fro
as though they shrank from the sound of their own
footsteps; the public ways were haunted rather than
frequented; and round the smoking ruins people stood
apart from one another and in silence, not venturing
to condemn the rioters, or to be supposed to do so,
even in whispers.
At the Lord President’s in Piccadilly, at Lambeth
Palace, at the Lord Chancellor’s in Great Ormond
Street, in the Royal Exchange, the Bank, the Guildhall,
the Inns of Court, the Courts of Law, and every chamber
fronting the streets near Westminster Hall and the
Houses of Parliament, parties of soldiers were posted
before daylight. A body of Horse Guards paraded
Palace Yard; an encampment was formed in the Park,
where fifteen hundred men and five battalions of Militia
were under arms; the Tower was fortified, the drawbridges
were raised, the cannon loaded and pointed, and two
regiments of artillery busied in strengthening the
fortress and preparing it for defence. A numerous
detachment of soldiers were stationed to keep guard
at the New River Head, which the people had threatened
to attack, and where, it was said, they meant to cut
off the main-pipes, so that there might be no water
for the extinction of the flames. In the Poultry,
and on Cornhill, and at several other leading points,
iron chains were drawn across the street; parties of
soldiers were distributed in some of the old city
churches while it was yet dark; and in several private
houses (among them, Lord Rockingham’s in Grosvenor
Square); which were blockaded as though to sustain
a siege, and had guns pointed from the windows.
When the sun rose, it shone into handsome apartments
filled with armed men; the furniture hastily heaped
away in corners, and made of little or no account,
in the terror of the time—on arms glittering
in city chambers, among desks and stools, and dusty
books—into little smoky churchyards in odd
lanes and by-ways, with soldiers lying down among
the tombs, or lounging under the shade of the one
old tree, and their pile of muskets sparkling in the
light—on solitary sentries pacing up and
down in courtyards, silent now, but yesterday resounding
with the din and hum of business—everywhere
on guard-rooms, garrisons, and threatening preparations.
